Had a week in Ste Foy a fortnight ago - great little resort, brilliant piste prep etc, and must be absolute gold when there's fresh snow.
We had no fresh snow, but proper cold weather and an empty resort made for some good quality corduroy in the mornings. Seemed like a good time to work on my carving...
It was easy to see that most of the time I was making fairly good sweeping turns, but tended to leave a trail behind me maybe 2 or 3 inches wide - a small bit of slide rather than riding the rail.
Did some exercises on an empty blue piste - point the board down the fall line at one edge, get onto tow or heel edge, carve across piste until heading uphill on the other side and the slope brought me to a stop. Nice. Knife like track behind me, and often made a full 180 degree curve or more.
As soon as I tried to link them going down the hill in flowing turns, I found it really tough to keep that clean edge. Basically felt that if I leant in to the turn anymore, I'd fall inwards. Or if I did get the board to really bite, then it would carve in to the turn underneath me, and I'd fall over outwards. (Over the high side, as a bike rider would put it.)
I had one fabulous wipe out where I really did commit on my toeside, the board whipped in underneath me, and I went flying outwards, out the front door...
I kept working on it, but seemed to have that chicken and egg issue. Couldn't commit to the carve without my weight in the right place. Couldn't get the weight inboard on the corner without committing to the carve...
I've just had a last minute invite for a trip in April, so it's something I want to push forward when I'm there.
Any thoughts?
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Fri 24-02-23 15:31; edited 1 time in total
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
malcolm moore has some interesting videos about carving and how to link turns.
Ryan Knapton also
You could check also this video
the best think is to let someone take a video from you and post it here
Otherweise the best of the best : find an instructor and make a couple hours private course
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Thanks for the video link, and yes, Malcolm Moore does have some good videos.
I've just had a go at uploading the little bit of video a friend did take, but currently having some trouble getting it to post without upsetting the security admin...
@BigSouthernJesse, From the sound of it, you're not committing yourself to the turn early enough. You need to be getting over the edge on the traverse part of the turn.
Also try and make sure you are keeping your weight centered to the boards length - that sounds like what happened in your wipe out - assuming you've got something like a duck stance, just try rotating your feet outwards inside your boots - any weight imbalance between your front and back leg will become much more obvious to you and allow you to correct. Try it every 3 or 4 turns to keep yourself centered.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Okay, haven't managed to upload / imbed a video, but there's a link here to an imgur hosting.
Ignore the first turn from heel to toe side, but though it gets quite far away, I think you can see I'm swapping edges pretty early, as part of the initiation into the turn downhill and back across the slope.
It's probably just a head space thing - more speed, more commitment...
Yep, from the video, I reckon you're not equally weighting your legs evenly.
On the second heelside turn you can see your back leg bag out to the back and your front leg is almost straight, like you're buttering the board, so you won't have the weight over the nose of the board you'd need to get the edge to bite properly. That, IMHO, is why you're having to rotate your hips into the turn causing the back end to skid around and you get that little puff of sloughed snow out the back.
Try getting your centre of gravity a bit lower too, bend those knees, and really make that front leg work as much as the back is.
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
I'd say you are going too much across the slope for your skill level and having to start the next turn with a bit of a skid turn because you are running out of space.
Try doing gentler carves more down the fall line and with a touch more speed. Once you are always on edge then you can begin to round out the turns with more edge angle and aggression.
After all it is free
After all it is free
Richard_Sideways wrote:
Yep, from the video, I reckon you're not equally weighting your legs evenly.
On the second heelside turn you can see your back leg bag out to the back and your front leg is almost straight....
Now you highlight that, yep, I can really see it.
Richard_Sideways wrote:
...like you're buttering the board, so you won't have the weight over the nose of the board you'd need to get the edge to bite properly. That, IMHO, is why you're having to rotate your hips into the turn causing the back end to skid around and you get that little puff of sloughed snow out the back.
Try getting your centre of gravity a bit lower too, bend those knees, and really make that front leg work as much as the back is.
Makes sense... will look to be more balanced between both legs/feet.
BoardieK wrote:
I'd say you are going too much across the slope for your skill level and having to start the next turn with a bit of a skid turn because you are running out of space.
Try doing gentler carves more down the fall line and with a touch more speed. Once you are always on edge then you can begin to round out the turns with more edge angle and aggression.
Think I felt more in control when I could take the speed off a bit at the intro to the next turn each time. Carrying more speed through smaller angle turns would probably help me commit more to staying on an edge. But once at speed, then I get back to the same issue as I mentioned in the first post... when the edge does bite, I'm not balanced for it. Lower C of G as mentioned above would help I guess.
Thanks guys.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
Quote:
Lower C of G as mentioned above would help I guess.
Absolutely, it really helps almost every aspect of riding, but don't forget, when you're lowering that CoG, don't go to Gorilla stance - hunched over, bending at the waist - keep the waist and upper body nice and in line, let the bend come from the knees, and keep it all nice and loose. When you look down you should see the board under you, not the snow on your toeside.
Happy trails!
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
My 2p. From the original post it sounded like you probably didn't have your weight over the edge - didn't have your knees bent. The video, first turn.. nice pants, but your knees are bent with the effect of sticking bottom out, where as they need to be bent more, so your weight is stacked over the edge.
That first turn is a bit... it looks like you're kicking your back foot around slightly. You can see the spray getting kicked up from that action. A better action is just to roll the board from the one edge to the other, you don't need to push the back leg across or anything. Because you're transitioning from leaning one way to leaning the other way, there's a point in the middle where the board's flat and you're directly over it, not leaning one way or the other. That works if you're stacked over the board, see above.
Translation: bend ze knees. I don't think you're far off.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
As above, there's some minor postural issues, but not too bad on that front. I was going to get stuck into that a bit more based on the first turn, but you've recognised that wasn't great so fair enough. Main suggestions would be to push your knees apart, drop a little lower in your stance and make sure your shoulders stay aligned with the board.
The biggest issue is that your weight is on the back foot at all times. This is really messing up your edge change and turn initiation (forcing you to use a flick of the shoulders / hip / rear foot). Shifting to the back does become important, but for the moment you should focus on being centered over both feet at all times during this style of riding, with a weight bias to the front foot as you change edge. You can slow the edge change down a LOT as well. As @phil_w mentions, it's perfectly ok for the board to go to a flat base for a moment between edges. Stay stacked and centered, tip the whole body to a flat base, tip again to the new edge.
It's a fair bet that this is an issue in all of your riding, not just in carving, so it would probably be good to get a session with an instructor to tidy that up. If you're in Sainte Foy again, there's a really good, local, independent, native English-speaking specialist snowboard instructor.....
For this kind of intermediate-plateau, looking to improve type lesson, I generally spend the first part of the lesson tidying up riders posture. Simply getting people to stand a bit lower in their stance and slow things down usually helps a lot, but people do often have bad postural habits which are pretty in-grained. After that, work on edge change and the start of the turn (if it doesn't start well, it won't finish well!). Weight shift forward, effective posture, foot-pedalling. Then get them doing mellow carves and use the carved-turn platform to start shaping the end of the turn (rear weight shift, up/down movement, counter-pedal). Would usually take at least a 3 hour lesson to get through all of that. More time than that to really get people feeling all of the turn in a mellow turn. Multiple lessons (and probably years of practise) to start applying it in different terrain types.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
It's been mentioned here before, but your weight should be around 60 front 40 rear when initiating the turn and generally when riding. The moment you're in the carve, as Malcom explains it in one of his videos, you shift a lot of that weight to your rear legs in the carve. This video from his has really helped me: http://youtube.com/v/FByHEG10fUU
And if you look at Ryan Knapton and how low he actually squats and where his body position is, should give you a good idea in terms of stance.
So off season, do squats and strengthen those quads - and also see if you are flexible enough to keep you feet/heel on the floor without tiptoeing when you're at the bottom of the squat position.
And what people don't realise, is I think carving engages a lot of core strength. So off-season training I think is also just as important. But I pretty much already do this because I climb a lot.
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